Abyssinian Prime, Hive Alveare
Tracks
He dropped the data slate onto the recaf table. He rubbed his eyes with his hooves but was unable dispel the endless lines of figures that had burned themselves into his retinas. Tracks got up from the sofa and started to walk around the hotel room they had rented for their stay on-planet. It was nice, but not luxurious. Tracks had been seriously tempted to hit up one of the five-star places but didn't want the first expense report he ever brought back to the Inquisition to show that he had used and abused his new-found credit limit.
Besides, he thought to himself as he walked around the suite's day-room / kitchenette, this place was perfect for all their needs. Everypony had their own room, the hotel had a gym for Double Arc, was within trotting distance of the hangar where the aquila was stored so Free Fall wouldn't go nutty, and free data net access for Devoid's... browsing habits. It even had a few spare rooms for equipment and this central room for group meetings and - apparently himself, as he seemed to be the only one using it.
They had landed two days ago and gotten right to work. Tracks had wanted to figure out what his dream connection with Double meant but his priority was still the mission he had actually been sent to accomplish. That meant going through billions of financial records to see if any met their search criteria. Pretending to be official Equestrian tithe auditors, Free Fall and Double Arc had gone to the Admanestratum central office and come back with mountains of data slates, filled with ridiculous amounts of financial figures.
He sighed as he came back to the table with a fresh cup of Earl Neigh tea. Two days and they had barely made a dent in the stack of information. He knew this was just a routine wrap-up job, making sure that all known aliases and accounts had been checked and double checked, but it was still important. Sophic had told him more times than he cared to remember than nine times out of ten, cases were solved by checking all the records. He hadn't mentioned the last time she had said it that she had a tech-pony capable of scrutinizing those documents at blazing speeds. Even with all four of them tearing through the figures, they were probably still only going a fraction of the speed as Sophic's medic/tech-pony Hypodermic.
Tracks sat on the day-room's couch, looked at the pile, picked up the data slate he had been working on, gave another weary sigh and went back to work.
Free Fall
Scroll scroll scroll. Sigh.
Tap tap tap. Sigh.
Scroll scroll scroll. Sigh.
Tap tap tap...
She threw the data slate at the wall. Hard. It rebounded with a satisfying crack. She rubbed her temples with her hooves. This record... whatevering was driving her crazy. She didn't know how the others did it. She really didn't. She looked at the curtains of her room. Maybe she could go for a quick fly, get her brain working again so she could take another look at the figures.
She moved over to the curtains and opened them. Her jaw fell as she saw that the view consisted of another window with similar curtains that was less than a full pony length away. "Wha..." Now she was angry. Devoid's room had a view of the hotel courtyard! Why didn't hers? How had she even missed this? She realized she had been so busy ferrying stacks of slates to and from the room that she hadn't even gotten a chance to see how lacking her room had been until this moment.
Well, she was going to fix that little problem. Right. Now. She stormed out of her room, making sure her hoof-falls were extra loud for the scene she planned on making. She pushed through her door and stomped her way towards the couch where Tracks was sitting. "You really need to tell me why-" her sentence cut itself off as she noticed the way Tracks was sitting. He was bolt upright, staring intensely at one of the numerous slates, and his jaw was hanging open.
"Tracks?" The mention of his name didn't seem to phase him at all. He sat there, glued to the flickering screen. "What is it Tracks?" The question seemed to finally shock him back to reality and he looked at her with a frantic, energetic look in his eyes.
He pointed a single purple hoof at the data slate. "He's here." Free Fall was getting concerned. Tracks' voice was actually shaking. What he said next sent a simultaneous thrill and chill through her. "Inquisitor Scisco. He's here. On Abyssinian Prime!"
Free Fall fell to a sitting position on the couch that flanked the table, her complaint about the view completely forgotten. She was speechless. She knew even Devoid would be unable to make a snide comment on this one. No one had figured that their investigations would turn up anything, especially not the Legendary Inquisitor Scisco. This discovery was amazing - and opened up a whole new world of questions. She felt like she needed to sit - but realized she already was as Tracks called everypony else into the room.
Excessive
The large chestnut colored stallion exited the interrogation room feeling very pleased with himself. The scumbag had thought he was tough. They all did. They all tried to act tough, pretend like they wouldn't tell him anything. That's why Excessive Force usually liked to get things started by showing the creeps who was really in charge. He usually started by breaking something of theirs. It worked so often that he rarely had to threaten them with the shotgun he had strapped to his right side.
Now he was surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the Alveare branch of the Equestris Arbites. Pony officers and deputies corralled criminals to and from interrogation rooms, holding cells, and the dreaded disposal chutes. He glanced at the clock that hung at end of the room. Still time to clear the paperwork off of his desk before he could go home and start sorting through all of the information he had gathered so far.
"Hey! E-F!" It was the section chief, Due Process. Excessive turned to face the greying stallion, who was regarding him with hazel eyes. "You get the information from the suspect before they expired this time?" Excessive almost ran his blood coated hoof through his yellow mane before he caught a glance at it and laughed. The section chief managed to look serious for almost a whole second before he joined in as well. "No, seriously-" He managed between chuckles. "-the district head thinks these scumbags have value or something."
"He's fine, D-P. He just misplaced some teeth in the interview table and developed a small bladder problem... well, large bladder problem. Tell the guys to bring a mop." Excessive straightened his black carapace barding and started to make his way to his office. He ignored the groaning of the deputies as they opened the interrogation room. He was going to crack this ring of corruption, no matter how many broken degenerates it took. Before he reached his office, he noticed that the door was open, despite him having closed it before the interview.
"Hey D-P?" He called across the busy room.
"Yeah?" Came the yelled reply.
"You let somepony into my office?" He was only mildly irritated that nopony had told him he should be expecting company. He hadn't even washed the blood off of his hooves yet.
"Yeah, some pony from the Admanestratum or something. Said he needed to ask you about something."
Now he didn't care about how he looked. Let the sniveling book-worm squirm at his appearance. He had no patience for the quill pushers of the bureaucracy. He was a field pony, a law pony, always would be.
When he stepped into his office, what he saw was not quite what he expected. His senses went into overdrive immediately as his instincts pulled in bits of information about who he now saw in front of him. His piercing green eyes ignored the obvious Admanestratum badge pinned to the stallion's front. What they did notice was the grey cloak concealing head and facial features, the weapon bulge - large one - on right side of the stallion's barrel, reinforced bracer on a purple left foreleg, and hoof spacing consistent with one trained in at least one of five hoof-to-hoof combat techniques he was familiar with. A hungry grin spread across his features. Somepony wasn't who they were pretending to be. And he was going to find out what they were hiding - find out big time.
Excessive kicked the door closed behind himself. The sounds of the rest of the station were suddenly cut off. He'd had this room soundproofed years ago just in case an emergency interrogation like this came up. The figured had jumped slightly at the sound of the door slamming. Good. Shaken up already. Even tensed up, the pony was a full head shorter than him. This was going to be easier than he thought. He kicked his right back leg up, which swung his over-under shotgun to point directly at the robed figure. "So, friend. Why are we impersonating the Admanestratum today?"
The purple pony stumbled backwards a few steps, he seemed to accidentally tangle his fore-hooves for a second before regaining his balance. Seemed. Tricky little guy. He probably did something with that gauntlet. The pony opened his mouth to speak but Excessive knew how to keep control of a situation. He cocked the shotgun's hammer.
"Shut yer trap, my little pony, unless you want it filled with scatter-shot." He gestured towards the metal cuff on the pony's foreleg. "Lift that up slowly, faced away from me. I know you did something with it, so I want to see it." The pony slowly lifted the foreleg until Excessive could see it. The device was well beyond his know-how, he'd have to have a techpony tear the thing apart to figure out how many ways it could have killed him. It had an indicator light that was glowing red though, the universal color of unit power failure or an empty clip. He felt emboldened. "Now, using that hoof, slowly pull back that hood, let's see yer pretty little face now."
The pony complied, very slowly moving his hoof up until it reached the hood. It then slowly began to draw the material back, revealing the features of the pony beneath. Muzzle, reddish eyes, black mane... Excessive's blood froze as he saw the glowing horn.
He moved with a speed borne of years of practice, pulling the trigger line to fire the gun at his side - but nothing happened. His eyes darted to see that the breach of the gun was open. The mechanism was surrounded in a red glow, the shells it had contained were suspended in mid air. He heard the distinctive click-whirr sound of an energy weapon powering up and looked back to see that the unicorn now had a hovering plasma pistol pointed at him.
"Witch!" He spat the accusation. "You may kill me, but the servants of Celestia will-" his tirade was cut short as a red glow surrounded his mouth and forcibly shut it.
When the unicorn spoke, it was calmly, it was as if he hadn't just been held at gunpoint. "Hold your horses there Arbiter. I'm not your enemy. I actually came here for your help." The force holding his mouth closed dissipated and he worked his jaw a moment before replying.
"If you think I'd ever work with a hateratick like you-" the unicorn clamped his mouth shut again with a sigh. Pity, he'd had a long string of profanity prepared too. The unicorn then reached into his cloak. Excessive prepared for the end. He wasn't scared. He had served Celestia faithfully for years. His would be a place of honor amongst-
He cut the thought short as he caught sight of the Inquisitorial rosette. The magical force released his mouth for a second time.
"OK-" The unicorn started. "Lets try this again."
Double
She wasn't quite sure how many ponies an Inquisitor was supposed to have under their command. At this rate, Tracks was going to have a small army by month's end. The Arbiter was massive, a full head over Tracks, half a head over Devoid, and completely dwarfing herself and Free Fall. At least Tracks had convinced the giant to remove his carapace barding. He was still frighteningly large, even without the added bulk, something closer now to the level of Sens for intimidation factor. The chestnut stallion's cutie mark was of the Arbiter scales of justice, with the scales blatantly tipped in favor of law. Once the brute had finished settling into one of the spare rooms, Tracks called everyone to the suite's day-room and began to explain what was going on in full detail.
He explained how, thirty years ago, the Legendary Inquisitor Scisco of the Ordos Hatericus had suddenly stopped reporting back to the Inquisitorial hub in the Bashkir system. Everypony believed him to have been killed during an investigation. After twenty years without contact the Ordo had declared him Perditus in Agro, or lost in the field. In an effort to reclaim all of the accounts and funds that Scisco had at his disposal, this was standard procedure in the case of an Inquisitor's death, the Inquisition tasked another Inquisitor, in this case it was Sophic Fortune, with tracking down and auditing every account with a connection to the deceased Inquisitor.
"But" - and here Tracks paused for obvious dramatic effect - "one of Scisco's secure accounts has been in use. In the last three months." He sat back with a smug look on his face.
"And?" Excessive's look and tone was far from impressed as he asked the question.
Tracks' face grew a frown as he leaned forwards again. "It means he's Alive! Alive and here on Abyssinian Prime! There haven't been any transport off of this rock in that time frame!" He was so full of enthusiasm he was almost shouting.
"Don't mean nuthin." Was Excessive's flat response. The bluntness caused Tracks' confused looking head to tilt to one side. "Somepony could have hijacked his account. Happens all the time." Excessive continued in a matter-of-fact tone.
Double wasn't really following any of the conversation after that point. She caught bits and pieces regarding Inquisition codes being impossible to break and something about amounts spent, and other accounting jargon she had never been interested in. She found her mind wandering upwards to the Accord and her shipmates. She wondered how they were doing, whether they had engaged the raiders yet.
She regained focus long enough to see that the argument had continued to escalate in her mental absence. Tracks and Excessive looked about ready to kill each other. Devoid and Free Fall were both watching the back and forth, their eyes springing from one debater to the other. Free Fall had a look of worry on her face. Devoid had that stupid bemused grin he liked to wear. She still had one question that was bugging her enough to risk sticking her hoof into this dog fight. She raised her hoof and coughed.
Tracks and Excessive stopped their bickering. They turned their heads towards her as she spoke. "Tracks, why did you go to the Arbites office?"
Strangely enough, Excessive was the one who answered. "He needed me to track the locations of the transactions using my credentials. If he used his, it'd be like waving a huge sign that screamed 'here comes he olde Inquisition!'" He punctuated the last statement with a flailing of his massive hooves.
"But. Who cares? Isn't he on our side? Who cares if he knows you found him?" It truly made no sense to her.
Tracks fielded the question this time. "Because he's either undercover, three decades undercover, OR" - here Tracks sent a small glare in Excessive's direction - "somepony with the ability to crack an Inquisition cipher has access to his accounts. Either way, we don't want to broadcast that the Inquisition is involved."
Double scratched her chin. It made sense. Sort of. She wasn't sure she was up for this sneaky stuff, it made her head hurt. She was used to a much more straightforward approach. See enemy, target enemy, fire thousands of tons of explosive ordinance at enemy. They were still looking at her so she asked the question she thought the meeting had been called to answer anyway. "So what do we do now?"
Tracks smiled. "Now is the fun part, we get to track down where these expenditures happened, and see if we can either find Scisco or whomever is using his access codes. Then we can try find out why he vanished thirty years ago."